SEMrush Review: 22 Stealth Competitor Research Tactics

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1 robbierichards.com SEMrush Review: 22 Stealth Competitor Research Tactics Robbie November 5, 2014 As an online marketer or business owner you know how important competitor research is to building a successful online marketing campaign. But, many people fail to give it the loving attention it deserves. Why? Some don t know where to start. Others have no idea what (keywords) to look for. Many think it s too expensive and time consuming. Some don t know who their main competitors are. Introducing SEMrush. I ve been using this tool on both personal projects and client campaigns for almost two years now. It s become the swiss army knife to my competitor research arsenal. Today, I m going to take you behind the scenes and show you 22 ways I use SEMrush to perform keyword analysis, audit paid ad campaigns, dissect content strategies, backlink analysis, keyword rank tracking, identify site monetization opportunities and more. Each tactic will highlight the feature, walk you step-by-step through how to use it, and provide an action item so you can start implementing these stealth competitor research tactics immediately. This post is the most comprehensive review (6,300 words) you ll find anywhere on the web, so I ve broken it down

2 into categories. [Quick] Intro Current Position Main Competitors Keyword Analysis Paid Advertising Backlink Analysis Extra Tools Quick Intro SEMrush is a platform that allows you to perform rapid SEO and PPC competitive analysis. You can perform indepth keyword analysis, dissect paid ad campaigns and content strategies, conduct backlink audits, identify profitable partnerships, track performance in real-time, and gather actionable insights that will strengthen your online marketing efforts. And, that s only the beginning. SEMrush provides more information than any other competitor research tool out there. It has a database of over 106 million keywords pulling from 97 million domains. The best part, it s light weight, easy to use and provides REAL TIME data! The tool can be used by digital agencies, in-house SEO/SEM teams, or anyone willing to jump in and get their hands dirty. Are you ready to get your hands dirty? Ok, let s pull back the curtains and crush your competition! #1: Search Overview

3 Before you start analyzing what your competitors are doing, you need to first figure how well you are performing in organic and paid search. Head over to SEMrush and enter your domain into the search bar Click the overview tab. This will provide an overview of how you are doing in terms of the amount of traffic you are getting organic and paid. You can see if site traffic is going up or down, if your rankings are improving or getting worse, how many keywords are ranking in Google s top 20 search results, backlink data and a whole lot more Set the date range for your report and download it as a PDF.

4 Action Item: Use the data on the overview dashboard to establish some benchmark metrics. How much organic traffic are you getting? How much paid traffic (if any)? How many keywords do you have ranking in the top three search results? Put the data in a spreadsheet. You can return to these metrics at a later date to see if you re SEO and PPC efforts are proving effective. Who are your top competitors? SEMrush allows you to quickly identify your top competitors across organic and paid search channels. #2: Competitor Positioning Map Enter your domain into the search bar Next, navigate to the Organic Research section in the left sidebar and select Competitors -

5 You will see a competitor positioning map highlighting your top organic search competitors. This visualization provides you with a quick snapshot of where you rank in the competitive landscape in terms of the number of keywords ranking in the top 20 search results, as well as the amount of search traffic going to the domain. In this example, we can see that Oceanled is dominating in both categories. Hover over the bubbles to see the exact numbers

6 Click on the bubble and you ll be taken to a dashboard covering different organic keyword, paid ad and backlink data. More on that later. #3: Organic Competitors Table Scroll down from the competitor positioning map and you ll find the organic competitors table. This is another great feature of the SEMrush platform that allows you to drill in and uncover additional competitors in the market In this example, the tool returns a list of 378 domains. These are all potential competitors, many of which you may not have ever even heard of. Can you imagine how long it would take to go out to Google and manually sift through the SERPs and put together a list this size? A LOT longer than the three seconds it just took you Time is money, and you just saved a bunch of it. Now, pay close attention to the following metrics in the table. Competition Level: the larger the number of common keywords, the greater the level of perceived competition. Common Keywords: how many of the same keywords your competitor is ranking for in the top 20 search results.

7 SE Keywords: the number of keywords bringing visitors to a website via Google s top 20 organic search results. These metrics will give you strong indication of who your top competitors are in the SERPs. I would also recommend concentrating on the SE Traffic Price column. This is the estimated price of organic keywords in AdWords. If your competitors have a high search engine traffic price value it means people perceive the terms they are ranking for as valuable. The takeaway? Highest search engine traffic price = competitor is ranking for more commercial intent keywords. These are transactional search terms. Highlight those competitors and dig deeper. You can also see how much search traffic they are getting and the number of keywords they are bidding on. Action Items: Export the table of top competitors and sort using the the different column metrics. The numbers will differ depending on the industry. Generally, I ll sort the data by SE keywords or SE traffic and then cut the list to the top 20. This will give you a manageable list to analyze, and more potential to keywords to discover.

8 #4: Common Keywords Time for some stealth keyword analysis. Remember the common keywords column in the Organic Competitors table? Click the number for your top organic competitor You ll see a table listing all the keywords both you and your competitor are ranking for in the top 20 search results View the specific ranking positions for each of the keywords, along with the average monthly search volume, CPC and competitive density metrics. The keywords with high average monthly search volume, CPC and competitive density are GOLDMINES. Why? Think about it this way.. Higher search volume = more traffic (and potential conversions).

9 Higher CPCs = advertisers are willing to pay more for the keyword. Higher competitive density = more competitors are bidding on the keyword. All of this put together equals commercial intent Action Item: Export the list of common keywords into a spreadsheet so you can sort by the data. Here are a couple ways you can sort the data to get some valuable insights Sort by competitive density to uncover low competition keywords you re competitors are ranking higher than you for. Re-visit your on-page optimization and link building strategy to see if there are opportunities to improve your content and climb higher in the SERPs. You can climb the rankings for low competition keywords very quickly with a couple quality backlinks and some basic on-page optimization. Sort by CPC to find high commercial intent keywords that you can use to attract more bottom-of-the-funnel traffic. #5: Domain Vs. Domain Chart OK, so you ve found a ton of keywords that both you and your competitor are ranking for and identified which keywords have commercial intent and will be relatively easy to rank for. But, what about the uncommon ones? The keywords your competitors are ranking for, but you re NOT Here s how to find to them. From the common keywords comparison table, toggle to the Chart view

10 You will see a Venn diagram that visualizes the share of keywords each domain has in common, as well as keywords unique to each website. Click on the section of the diagram that contains keywords exclusive to your competitor. This will return a table of hundreds (maybe thousands) of keywords that your competitor is ranking for, but you are NOT You will be able to sort the data just like you did in the common keywords table in the previous step. Action Item: Export the keyword list and sort by search volume and competition. This will give you a boat load of new high volume/ low competition keywords you can target with content, rank quickly and use to drive new traffic to your site. #6: Related Keywords So far you have A list of keywords that both you and your competitor are ranking for.

11 A list of keywords unique to your competitors. Now, we re going to expand on that list even further by uncovering some Related Keywords. These are the keywords SEMRush feels are related to your original keyword search. This is synonymous with Google s related search functionality Related keywords can provide additional keywords that your competitors have not begun targeting yet, giving you a proactive first mover advantage. Choose a keyword with high search volume and enter into the search bar. Then, scroll down to the Related Keywords report

12 Look at the search volume, CPC and SERP source for each of the keywords. Click to view the the full report. This will provide several additional metrics for each keyword such as the competitive density and trend analysis The key hear is to try and find relevant keywords to add to your growing list. You can get extremely granular with this. Click on one of the related search terms and you will see a list of keywords related to that related search term The cool thing about this feature is that as you continue to click deeper and deeper into the related search terms report you will find valuable long tail keywords relevant to all stages of your sales funnel Action Item: Sort the list by search volume. Set a cut-off threshold. For this example, we ll export and sort the kywords, deleting any with a monthly search volume below 1,000.

13 Add these terms to your master keyword list and remove any duplicates. Now, only those related terms not already on your list are added. Search for a commercial intent keyword. For example, buy underwater boat lights. Click 2-3 levels deep into the related search terms report to find loads of long-tail variations. These are the search terms you ll want to be sprinkling throughout your content in order to maximize the latent semantic indexing (more variations = more clues = stronger relevancy) and ranking potential for those pages. #7: Competitor s Top Performing Keywords and Content This is one of my favorite features of SEMrush. Go to the the Organic Search Positions report and enter one of your competitors domains. Let s look at Jason Acidre s blog Kaiser The Sage as an example Scroll down to the Organic Search Positions report. You will see a table that includes top ranking keywords as well as the URL of the page ranking for that particular keyword Sort the keywords by search volume and you ll be able to see which types of content are driving your competitor s organic search traffic. In this example we can see that Kaiser The Sage gets a large portion of his organic traffic from search terms related to social media marketing strategies and internet marketing strategies. Click on the blue arrow next to each URL to open up the webpage and take a closer look at the quality, length and format of the content, as well as on-page SEO elements.

14 Jason uses a list post to highlight all his most popular social media posts. A valuable resources that ranks highly in the SERPs. Leverage these insights to guide your own content strategy. Action Items: Take a look at the types of content your competitor is using to rank for high traffic long-tail keywords. Pay close attention to the quality and format of the content. Choose a couple pieces of content and blow them out of the water with the Skyscraper Technique. I used this exact strategy to write a post that generated 10,199 visits to my blog in 30 days (without spending a penny). #8: Keyword Difficulty Report SEMrush recently added the Keyword Difficulty Tool to it s feature set. Go to the tools section and hit the Keyword Difficulty link

15 Next, enter a list of your target keywords. I m currently using the PRO plan so I can test up to 100 keywords at a time. Once you ve entered your keywords hit Show Difficulty. You ll see a table that lists the difficulty percentage, volume and SERP snapshot for each keyword

16 The higher the percentage the more difficult it will be to rank for those keywords. Click on a keyword and you ll be able to see which of your competitors, and the corresponding URL, are already ranking for that search term. Action Item: Copy and paste a list of your target keywords into the Keyword Difficulty Tool to determinehow hard it will be to steal your competitor s position in the SERPs. From my experience, any keywords that contain a difficulty percentage below 60% are prime targets. With a solid SEO and content promotion strategy in place you can knock off your competitors quickly and boost your search traffic. I run a lot of paid search campaigns for clients across a wide range of verticals. Everything from real estate to agriculture to dentists to marine electronics. SEMrush is one of the first tools I use to start planning out my campaigns. It allows me to see which keywords my competitors are bidding on, where they rank, as well as the ad copy and destination URLs they are using to increase quality score and conversions. Here are a few reports you can use to beef up your ad campaigns and make your dollars do work! #9: Paid Search Positions Go to the Advertising Research section and hit the Positions link. Enter a competitor domain into the search box. In a matter of seconds you ll get a high level overview of their paid search campaign, including: The number of keywords bringing visitors to their site through paid search. The amount of traffic generated by paid ads. An estimation of how much your competitor is investing in paid search. When looking at the trend graph be sure to toggle to the Traffic Cost tab

17 This will allow you to see if your competitors have started to increase or decrease their ad spending. This could provide some insight into whether or not they are getting a solid ROI through the channel. Next, scroll down to the Paid Search Positions table You ll be given a treasure trove of information related to your competitor s paid search campaign, including the specific paid keywords bringing users to their site, ad copy, landing page URLs, CPC, ad rank, traffic percentage, competitive density and trend analysis. Typically, there will be a ton of branded search terms. Export the keywords and remove all the branded search terms. Then, sort the list by search volume. Pay attention to the competitive density and CPC metrics. Remember, higher CPC/competition metrics indicate a higher level of commercial intent. Action Items: Spend some time analyzing the data in the table. Look closely at the ad copy and destination URLs for the different keywords. Specifically, ask yourself the following questions Does your competitor have a dedicated landing page for their paid campaign? Is the landing page messaging closely related to the ad copy? Are they using benefit-driven headlines incorporating keywords? What type of media are they using (video, graphics etc)?

18 How are they structuring ad copy keywords, benefits, incentives, CTAs? These are all elements that will dictate quality score, ad rank, CPC and conversions in paid search. If your competitors ads are ranking #1 in paid search look at their ad copy and landing page structure and see what you can leverage to improve your own campaign. #10: Position Changes This feature provides a ton of value. Go to the Position Changes section and enter your competitor s domain. You will then see a report showing new, lost, improved and declined keywords The new and lost keywords are worth looking at. Lost keywords could imply that those terms were not delivering a positive ROI and might not be a good target for you. New keywords could highlight areas your competitors see potential in.

19 Let s take a look at ebay as an example. We ll click on the new keywords bar to pull up a list of the new terms your competitors are targeting in paid search Scroll through the list and see if there are any keywords related to the products or service you offer, that you aren t already targeting. Once you find a potential keyword, hover over the yellow ad text to view the ad that particular keyword is triggering- This should give you some ad copy ideas. Likewise, you can click the lost keywords bar in the graph to return a list of keywords your competitors are no longer using to generate paid search traffic. Go through the list and see if any of the terms in the list are keywords you already (are considering) targeting in your paid campaign. You ll want to monitor their return closely, or remove them altogether to avoid wasted ad spend. #11: Paid Ad Competitors Who are your top competitors in paid search?

20 Go to the Competitors tab in the Advertising section and enter your domain. You ll see a competitor positioning map as well as a table listing your top competitors. The metrics are broken in a similar format to the organic section: Competition Level: higher number of common keywords = higher competition level. Ads Keywords: the number of keywords your competitors are bidding on in paid search. Ads Traffic: how much traffic the paid ads are sending to your competitors site. Ads Traffic Price: how much your competitors are spending each month on their paid ad campaigns. Click on the numbers in each column to drill in see which specific keywords your competitors are bidding on, search volume, average CPC and competition level. Again, pay close attention to the ad copy and landing pages being used by your competitors. Action Items: Identify your top five competitors in paid search. Look closely at how much they are investing in paid ads along with

21 the number of keywords they are bidding on. Look at the Keywords and Traffic Cost graphs. See if there are any trends. For example, if there is a sustained increase in the number of keywords being bid on, but a steady decrease in the traffic cost, it s likely your competitor has managed to optimize their ad campaign, boost quality scores and drive down their average CPC. This would likely equate to a lower customer acquisition cost. Combine different data sets to unearth patterns. In this case, I d be going over ad copy, landing page experience and paid keywords to see how my competitors are optimizing their campaigns to drive down cost. And, take some of what s working them and distilling it into my own campaign. #12: Ad Copy Use this report to get a comprehensive look at the different types of ad copy your competitors are using

22 You can see how many paid keywords are triggering each ad and filter the results based on title copy, ad copy and visible URL to analyze the ad copy relevant to the keywords you re wanting to target. Action Item: If you re struggling for ad copy ideas for your paid ad campaign go to the Ad Copies report and get a complete snapshot of what your competitors ad copy. This will help get the creative juices flowing. Also, save yourself time by filtering the results by only those keywords you want to target in your campaign. #13: Ads History We don t all have the time to rigorously test and optimize our paid ad campaigns. This is where the Ads History report comes to the rescue. This report lets your competitors do the work while you reap the benefits. It allows you to determine when, and how often your competitors bid on each keyword. If you notice that your competitors have bid on a particular keyword over a long period of time, you can reasonably infer it is a profitable keyword. You can also uncover which ad copy is performing best by looking at the historical data. Go to Advertising Research >> Ads History and enter your competitor s domain. You will see a table that looks like this If the cell is filled blue then your competitor was bidding on the keyword that month. The keywords showing blue for each month are likely high performing since they have chosen to bid on them for over a year straight. Click on a blue cell and you ll see which ad copy they are using to target each keyword

23 This provides insights into the different types of ad copy your competitors have been testing. If you notice they have used the same ad copy for a long period you can predict that this ad copy converts well. Conversely, if you notice that your competitors tried certain ad copy and then quickly changed it the next month, then it must not have performed well. You can use your competitors historical ad data to optimize your own ad copy and keyword bids without having to spend a lot of money testing. Action Items: Enter your competitors domain into the Ads History report and look for trends. If your competitor has bid on a specific keyword or ran the same ad copy for a long period of time, it likely converts well. You might want to replicate some of their ad copy and bid on those keywords. If you notice that they bid on a certain keyword for a few months and then discontinued, you can determine that keyword did NOT perform well and elect to remove it from your paid keyword list. #14: PLA Positions If you sell products online you probably have product listing ads running through Google s merchant center. SEMrush recently launched the PLA Positions report. You ll be able to view the PLAs your competitors are running, where they rank, the keywords triggering the ads, the landing page URL, search volume, product title, and my favorite product prices.

24 PLAs typically have the highest CTRs, and in my experience, conversion rates. This can be attributed to the top-ofpage ad placement and visual real estate they occupy in the SERPs. This report is great for analyzing the pricing strategy of your top competitors. Action Items: Enter five of your top competitors into the PLA Positions report. Make a note of your competitor s pricing strategy. Sort the PLAs by position. Click through to the landing pages of the top ranking ads and see how they have optimized the landing page experience. Do they incorporate keywords in PLA title, landing page headers and body copy? #15: Find Advertising Opportunities If you re a blogger driving solid traffic to your site and are open to on-site advertising, this section is for you. There are many sites out there paying for the traffic that you are driving through organic search. So, if you were able to identify those sites and offer them advertising on your site, you could quickly start to monetize your traffic. SEMrush makes this SUPER easy. Here s how to do it Go to Organic Research >> Competitors and enter your domain. Scroll down to the Organic Competitors table and select one of your competitors Pay attention to Ads Keywords column.

25 Look for competitors that are bidding on the keywords you are ranking for. In this example I would click on the Common Keywords metric next to Sproutsocial.com. You ll be taken to a Comparison of Domains by Keywords report. Set the filters so you are returning the keywords that you rank for organically and your competitor is bidding on in paid search There are 114 results. The first result is for free twitter analytics tools. If you take a look a the SERP snapshot and you ll notice razorsocial is ranked #1 organically for that search term, while Sproutsocial is currently bidding on the search term

26 Jackpot! Action Items: SEMrush is a great place to source partnerships with companies that are bidding on the keywords you rank organically for. Reach out to some of these companies and see if they are interested in placing ads on your site. This can be a winwin, especially if they are spending a lot of money on the keywords you rank for. Negotiate an ad fee and start collecting money.

27 SEMrush provides the capability to analyze your competitor backlinks profiles. You can can uncover the number of backlinks, referring domains, follow/no follow and top level domain distribution. These features can help you better understand your competitor s link building strategy and highlight new sources you can tap into to build backlinks and referral traffic. #16: Backlinks Overview Go to Backlinks >> Overview and enter your competitor s domain. You ll see the following high level metrics Pay attention to the number of referring domains. This is a strong indicator of the diversity of your competitor s link profile. A large number of relevant referring domains will boost a site s overall domain authority. Another piece of data you ll want to look at is the type of backlinks your competitor is getting. As you can see in the graph, over 97% of Backlinko s backlinks are text links. This is another indication of a killer backlink profile. The site likely has a large number of contextual backlinks.

28 The best kind Backlinko also has quite a few.org backlinks..org,.edu and.gov backlinks will typically pass more pagerank (link juice) onto your site. #17: Referring Domains From the Backlinks Overview page, click on the Referring Domains metric. You ll be able to see a table containing all the domains sending backlinks to your competitor s website Brian has nice list of high PR domains linking to his site, including a healthy mix of net,.org,.com TLDs. You can also see how many backlinks are coming from each domain. Action Items: Look closely at the type of sites linking to your competitor. In this case, it looks like Brian is active on forums such as Warrior Forum and Inbound.org. These are communities you could start engaging in to drive traffic to your site. He also has a large number of links coming from searchengineland.com and kikolani.com. He might be guest posting there. Maybe an opportunity to pitch a guest post of your own He has 46 backlinks coming from Scoop.it. This could indicate that he is leveraging the social channel to promote his content. Backlinko is getting links from AllTop indicating that he may have submitted his domain to the directory. Smart move. AllTop provides high PR submission backlinks for hundreds of different business categories. Use these insights to guide your own content and link building strategies. #18: Backlinks Ok, so you know which domains are linking to your competitor

29 Now, it s time to see which specific pages are linking. This show you exactly how they are getting their links. Are they using guest posts, forum marketing or directory submissions to build links and drive traffic? Let s find out. Click on the Total Backlinks metric. You ll be able to see where the backlink originated, as well as which page on your competitor s site received the backlink Other useful metrics including the anchor text and number of other external links pointing to your competitor s site from each referring page. You can also see if the links are follow/no follow (pass pagerank). One thing to note here is that Backlinko has a nice mix of brand, keyword and naked url anchor text. Penguin-Proof So, you have a huge list of backlink URLs But, how the heck do you extract actionable insights? Filters. You are able to filter the backlink URLs by type and zone I might want to see how Brian is getting his.org backlinks, since these are powerful links. I d filter the results by zone and.org

30 This will return a list of only those.org sites linking to the domain. See if there are any backlinks you can replicate in your own link building campaign. #19: Indexed Pages How would like to know which specific pages on your competitor s website are attracting the most links? Go to Backlinks >> Indexed Pages. You ll see a list of your competitor s best link building assets Sort the domain column to return results in descending order. Backlinko s YouTube SEO post has attracted the most referring domain backlinks. If you re in the SEO/link building space, you instantly know that content targeting this subject could be used to build links and traffic. Take a look at which of your competitor s posts/pages are generating the most backlinks. This will give you an idea of the types of linkable content you can incorporate into your own content strategy. Remember, this is proven link-worthy content. Explore the content in depth and see if there any opportunities to expand and make it better. This insight forms the foundation of my content promotion strategy.

31 SEMrush allows provides several tools that allow you to compare domains across a number of different search and keyword metrics, as well as track position changes. #20: Position Tracking This feature is currently in Beta. Position Tracker allows you to monitor daily changes in the positions of your competitors for organic and Adwords keywords in Google. You can track position changes for up to 500 keywords. Go to Tools >> Position Tracking. Click Add New Project. On general settings tab enter your first domain and display name for the project Next, you ll need to set the following tracking settings

32 Enter the domain you want to track. If you select the domain custom title you can name it so you don t get it mixed up with other domains you are tracking. Specify the location you want to track the keyword positions in. Select competitors against which you want to compare you rankings against Connect Google services such as Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools which will allow you to retrieve additional information for your analysis. You can add the keywords you want to track in multiple ways manually, by letting SEMRush add the top 20 keywords, from a text file or by retrieving information from Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools. Then select whether or not you want weekly tracking results sent to you via . Create your project and start tracking. Action Items: Make a list of your top 20 keywords and import them into the position tracker. Monitor them closely. If your rankings begin to slide, start investigating. Some things to look at: Re-evaluate on-page elements title tag and heading tags, alt text, load speed, long-tail keyword variations and internal linking to see if there are areas for quick optimization.

33 Use the Indexed Pages feature to identify top performing pages and place relevant internal links from those pages to the struggling content. Start building links. Also, pay attention to position shifts from the competitors you are tracking. If you notice some of your competitors climbing quickly up the SERPs dive in and identify which pages are ranking for the keyword and look at their on-page SEO efforts. How are they optimizing key on-page elements and how is it different to what you re doing? If there are no obvious differences, copy the URL of the page that is rising in the rankings and paste it into the Backlinks tool and run it with the URL filter to isolate backlink data for that single page See if there is a recent influx in referring domains or pages linking to their content. If there is, take note of the linking source. How are your competitors scaling their link building efforts? Guest posts? Directories? Forums? Roundups? Internal linking? Social media sites? Once you identify the sources, try and replicate where possible. #21: Domain Vs. Domain This feature allow you to compare domains according to their keyword intersections. Go to Tools >> Domain vs Domain. Enter up to five domains you d like to compare with organic and paid keyword data Hit Go. You ll see how each domain is ranking for common keywords. This tool will show you how you rank against your competitors in organic search

34 Toggle to the chart view to segment common and unique keywords for each domain By clicking on different intersection points within the venn diagram you ll be able to view common and unique keywords, as well as the keywords your competitors are ranking for but you are NOT Jackpot! Action Items: Within the venn diagram view click on the intersection that contains all the keywords your competitors are ranking for but you are NOT. Export the list of keywords and sort by search volume. Look through all the high traffic keywords your competitors are ranking for and see if there are any high volume/ low competition keywords you can target with your content. This is a great way to identify new keyword opportunities you can leverage for quick wins and more search traffic. #22: Charts The Charts tool is great for producing quick data visualizations for up to five different domains. You can generate graphs based on search traffic, number of keywords, traffic price, new keywords and much more

35 Here is a graph showcasing Backlinko s organic search traffic increase You can represent the data in a line, bar and pie graph format. Export or print the graphics as a PDF for reporting. Action Items: Use the charts to get a quick visualization of how your site, clients and competitors are performing over time across key search metrics. One really cool application for the chart tool is new/lost keyword performance. Filter the graph to identify if your competitors are ranking for new keywords

36 Click on the graph to see which specific new keywords they are ranking for. Take note of the URL ranking for each keyword. If the new keyword has a low competitive density, go after it with your own content. How Does SEMrush Get The Data Some of you may be wondering how SEMrush collects its data, despite Google s move to not provided encryption. So, I did some research and found an answer. Rae Hoffman asked David Black, the Head of Customer Relations and Video Content Development at SEMrush the following question Rae: You offer estimated traffic data for sites. How do you determine how much traffic a site is receiving without access to their analytics? Additionally, You offer a listing of keywords you (SEMRush) believe drive traffic to a site. How are you identifying those keywords and how does Google s recent move to 100% secure search (not provided) affect your ability to identify those keywords (if at all)? Black: We take a database of the top 95 million keywords worldwide and automatically query each keyword on a regular basis. Sometimes, as often as everyday, depending on the popularity of the keyword. Then, we record the first two pages of search results for each keyword and parse that source data in order to determine which domains rank for these keywords and where. Since we re looking at Google from the outside and reflecting what we see, that s exactly why we re not affected by the (not provided) issue. In order to determine a domain s traffic coming from organic and ads keywords, our algorithms factor in the search volume for each keyword in their report, along with their ranking position to find what percentage of the monthly search volume is going to them based strictly off of where they rank on the SERP. We do that same calculation for each keyword and then total it all up. Pricing & Plans There is a free version of the tool. However, the reporting features are very limited. SEMRush has two paid plans and three pricing options. The Pro plan is $79.95 for one month of access ors $69.95 per month if you put your account onto recurring billing (meaning you use more than a month of the service). If you re an individual blogger or small agency the PRO account will be plenty.

37 The Guru plan is designed for larger agencies. It goes for $149.95/mo. The Guru plan allows you to run 3 simultaneous sessions (multiple people can be logged in and working in the account at the same time) and run more reports and store historical data. You ll also be able to create branded PDF reports for clients. The Swiss Army Knife Of Competitor Research There you have it, 22 ways you can use SEMrush to analyze and crush your competition. SEMrush is FAR MORE than a keyword research tool. Use the tactics covered above to identify new keyword opportunities, areas for paid ad optimization, uncover link building opportunities and generate new content ideas. SEMrush is one of my top 3 tools simply because it allows me to perform so many tasks and acquire so much actionable data in one place.